U.S. Navy and U.S. Army order more Phalanx guns

Raytheon has won a $247.1 million contract to build, upgrade and overhaul Phalanx close-in weapon systems for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, covering the shipboard gun, its land-based counterpart and the missile-armed SeaRAM, the U.S. Department of War announced.

Naval Air Systems Command awarded the firm-fixed-price contract to the RTX business without competition. It covers production, upgrades, conversions and overhauls of MK 15 Close-In Weapon Systems, along with hardware, equipment and spare parts, and runs through September 2030. The notice does not say how many new systems will be built or how many existing ones will be refurbished.

Phalanx is a radar-guided, computer-controlled 20 mm Gatling gun that fires between 3,000 and 4,500 rounds per minute. It is designed to shoot down anti-ship missiles and other threats that get past a ship’s longer-range defenses, and Raytheon says it is installed on every U.S. Navy surface combatant class and on ships from 24 allied nations.

The gun proved its value in combat on Jan. 30, 2024, when the destroyer USS Gravely (DDG 107) used its Phalanx to destroy a Houthi anti-ship cruise missile in the Red Sea. The missile had come within about 1.6 km (1 mile) of the ship, a matter of seconds from impact, and it was the first time a U.S. warship had needed the system during the Red Sea campaign.

The U.S. Army’s share of the contract goes to the Land-based Phalanx Weapon System, the core of its Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar defense, known as C-RAM. The land version, fielded since 2005, uses the same gun and radar to shoot down incoming rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds over bases. The contract also covers SeaRAM, which pairs Phalanx’s sensors with a launcher for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles to engage threats at longer range than the gun.

The funding split shows how much of the work is for the U.S. Army. Of the roughly $240.6 million obligated at award, all of it fiscal 2026 money, about $104.2 million comes from U.S. Army procurement and operations and maintenance accounts. The remaining $136.4 million comes from four U.S. Navy accounts: procurement, operations and maintenance, shipbuilding, and weapons procurement.

A third of the work will take place in Louisville, Kentucky, the main center for Phalanx production and overhauls, and 7% in Tucson, Arizona. The rest is spread across 16 other named sites in the United States, plus Ottobrunn, Germany, at 4%, and various U.S. locations accounting for 23%.

The award follows a $205 million U.S. Navy contract Raytheon received in September 2025 for similar Phalanx production, upgrade and overhaul work running through 2029. In June 2025, the U.S. Army separately awarded Raytheon $279.2 million for management support of its Land-based Phalanx fleet through 2030.